Collaborative Research: Building Supports for Diversity through Engineering Teams

培养能在跨文化团队中有效工作的学生是工程教育的重要组成部分。在我们日益全球化的经济中，学生必须做好充分的准备，以满足工程劳动力的需求。然而，许多学生在上大学之前没有国际视野，也没有与来自不同背景的人交流的经验。因此，了解如何在多元文化群体中改善团队互动可以为学生提供新的机会，让他们更深入地欣赏工程团队的差异，同时加深他们对工程概念的理解。这个项目的重点是学生如何在第一年的课程中参与不同的工程团队，以及他们的参与如何影响学生的多元文化有效性和多样性敏感性。多元文化的有效性和多样性敏感性已被证明有助于实现对有效团队至关重要的共同群体认同。该项目由工程教育界的两个更广泛的目标驱动，并由ABET推动，这两个目标是互补的：1)研究生具有在多学科团队中工作的能力，2)为学生提供了解工程解决方案全球影响所需的广泛教育。了解学生从事工程设计的经历以及由此产生的态度转变，将有助于找到切实可行的方法，提高学生对来自不同背景的人的理解和欣赏。这些干预措施可能会改变这些机构的工程文化，使其更包容代表性不足的学生。该项目由工程教育研究项目和EHR核心研究（ECR）项目支持，特别是残疾教育领域的ECR研究。ECR强调在STEM领域产生基础知识的基础教育研究。本研究项目有助于拓宽STEM参与的基础知识。这个顺序解释性混合方法研究将解决当前文献中的空白，以了解学生如何在不同的团队中互动。学生人口统计数据将包括种族、民族、性别、残疾和其他信息，这些信息将用作数据分析和解释结果的变量。第一阶段的研究将定量测量多元化团队形成对多样性敏感性和多元文化有效性的影响。在学生被分成小组之前，将在第一年的工程课开始时收集学生态度的基线调查。学生将通过团队成员效能综合评估（CATME）分为不同的团队，并在学期中期和期末进行调查，使用时间序列结构方程模型跟踪基于团队组成的多样性敏感性和多元文化效能的变化。此外，社会网络分析将用于了解学生如何在其分配的工程任务团队内部和外部工作，以识别工程内部的边界跨越个人。最后，在工程任务（音频记录、视频记录、观察和工作产品）期间，将收集团队交互的多个数据流。第二阶段的研究将对学生进行解释性现象学访谈，以了解学生在不同团队中的工作经历。参加面试的学生还将被要求完成内隐联想测试，以引出群体内偏好。解释性现象学访谈的使用允许通过分析学生的生活经验来创造理解，同时仍然允许研究人员利用现有文献的理解。这种定性方法使我们能够成功地将解释结果转移到本工作的范围之外，以推进围绕工程中不同团队的对话。通过结合本工作中概述的方法，我们可以识别由同龄人组成的“外群体”成员的社区成员，并从经验上理解驱动外群体创建的个人实践和这些学生在工程团队环境中的经验。这项工作的发现可以对如何在工程团队中对学生进行分组和教学产生重大影响，这可以改善学生的经验，使工程更具包容性，团队合作技能更有效。

Developing students who can work effectively in cross-cultural teams is an important part of engineering education. In our increasingly global economy, students must be adequately prepared to meet the demands of the engineering workforce. However, many students do not have international exposure prior to college or the experience of interacting with others from a variety of backgrounds. As such, understanding how to improve team interactions within culturally diverse groups can provide novel opportunities for students to more deeply appreciate differences in engineering teams while simultaneously deepening their understanding of engineering concepts. This project is focused on how students participate in diverse engineering teams in first-year courses and how their participation impacts students' multicultural effectiveness and diversity sensitivity. Multicultural effectiveness and diversity sensitivity have been shown to help achieve a common group identity that is essential to effective teams. This project is motivated by two broader goals in the engineering education community and promoted by ABET which are complementary: 1) to graduate students with an ability to function on multidisciplinary teams and 2) to give students the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions globally. Understanding the experiences of students engaging in engineering design and the resulting shifts in attitudes will help identify practical ways to increase students' understanding and appreciation of people from diverse backgrounds. These interventions may change the culture of engineering at these institutions to make it more inclusive of underrepresented students. This project is supported by the Research in Engineering Education program and the EHR Core Research (ECR) program, specifically the ECR Research in Disabilities Education area of special interest. ECR emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. This research project contributes to foundational knowledge about broadening participation in STEM. This sequential explanatory mixed methods study will address the gap in the current literature to understand how students interact in diverse teams. Student demographic data will include race, ethnicity, gender, disability and other information to be used as variables in the data analyses and interpretations of the findings. The first phase of research will quantitatively measure effects of diverse team formation on diversity sensitivity and multicultural effectiveness. A baseline survey of student attitudes will be collected at the beginning of their first-year engineering class before students are grouped into teams. Students will be grouped into diverse teams via the Comprehensive Assessment for Team Member Effectiveness (CATME) and surveyed mid- and end-semester to track changes in diversity sensitivity and multicultural effectiveness based on team composition using time series structural equation modeling. Additionally, social network analysis will be used to understand how students work within and outside of their assigned teams on engineering tasks to identify boundary crossing individuals within engineering. Finally, multiple streams of data will be collected on team interactions during engineering tasks (audio recording, video recording, observation, and work products). The second phase of research will conduct interpretative phenomenological interviews with students to understand students' experiences working in diverse teams. Students participating in interviews will also be asked to complete Implicit Association Tests to elicit in-group preferences. The use of interpretative phenomenological interviews allows for the creation of understanding through the analysis of students' lived experiences while still allowing the researcher to leverage understanding from existing literature. This qualitative methodology allows us to successfully transfer interpretive results beyond the bounds of this work to advance the conversations around diverse teaming in engineering. By combining the methodologies outlined in this work we can identify members of the community who are made "out-group" members by their peers and empirically understand the practices of individuals that drive the creation of out-groups and these students' experiences in engineering teaming environments. The findings of this work can have significant impact in how students are grouped and taught within engineering teams, which can improve students' experiences to make engineering more inclusive and teaming skills more effective.